HybridEarth: Social mixed reality at planet scale

Using Google Street View navigable imagery and adding users´ avatars to it, we have implemented a virtual world copy of the real world. Thanks to a geolocation technique with a precision in centimeters, users wearing augmented reality devices are inserted at their actual location in the mirror virtual world and can see all its virtual elements, including avatars. As HybridEarth can potentially host millions of avatars-much more than today´s virtual worlds - we have built it on top of Kiwano, a distributed infrastructure for scaling virtual worlds, designed and implemented by our team. HybridEarth is accessible from http://hybridearth.net where users can enter the world either by installing an application on their Android device or by walking their avatar in the virtual world. Running inside any recent web browser, the virtual world covers the planet wherever Google Street View is available and can be extended by adding new imagery with the provided smartphone application.